<name tag: rook>

 

HERO’S FORGE

At thirty-six Elaina Thompson was ten years older than most of the other women working around her and about fifteen years older than any of the men. She had worked at a few jobs right out of high school before deciding on a career at a reputable and respectable company where she put in eight long ten hour day years before it suddenly went belly up due to a stock market crash that was triggered by the overwhelming greed and utter lack of morals by the wealthy elite upper managers and CEO’s and millionaire shareholders of which her own bosses were very much a part of. Fortunately the government stepped in and with the multitude of the suddenly even poorer and even more unemployed tax payer’s money they made sure not a single wealthy person was harmed in the fiscal crises. Not only did the wealthy not lose any money from their own pockets but as their companies shut down the government money and their personal army of lawyers made sure they all got their bonuses and perks as they sauntered out into the sunset full of golden parachutes to their privet yachts with martins firmly in hand as the business of which they were the caretakers to lay in smoldering ruins behind them.

Elaina had then hustled and got another job and starting at scratch slowly started working her way up the ladder with even longer hours and harder workloads at another respectful company. But since no one of any responsibility had been harmed in the last greed inspired fiscal crises and since none of them had been held to any accountability let alone being jailed for their crimes against humanity these same people still ran the show and after five years the recession which had never existed for the wealthy and never stopped existing for the increasingly numbering poor went through a second wave identical to the first of massive insane pig grunting greed at the top and Elaina once again found herself desperately pounding the streets looking for work.

Hence her current position at Smotherbys, as little more than a junior clerk hanging around the bottom rungs (all the other rungs above her having been removed) alongside people who she could have been the mother of, age discrepancy speaking; and living in almost the same one room apartment flats as they did. With nothing to show for her desperate life of harsh toil but holes in her shoes and an empty dorm fridge and a pile of bills for items she no longer owned. But luckily none of the wealthy had been hurt so the government breathed a sigh of relief and went about their job of destroying anything they could lay their hands on in the world that looked like it might still be operational. And the rich went about setting up for the next fiscal crises as they had found this was a really good way for them to make money for themselves and create a cheap labor pool that they could shamelessly overwork without any fear of government enforcing any of its existing labor laws. They had brought indentured servitude back, the first backwards step toward full blown slavery, and were very tickled pink and excited by their own geniuses of reinventing the Stone Age wheel.

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Elaina was beat. She had just completed her normal twelve hour shift for what would be a ten day week this week with two days of it left before she got her one day off and started her normal six day work week again. One of the teen girls was out on maternity leave and she had to cover because none of the managers believed in doing work. They would walk around with their hands in their pockets telling anyone they met that their jobs as managers meant they were the conductors of the orchestra and that by pitching in and helping their employees they were merely enabling them so they would just work that much less instead of more and ultimately that would make their jobs so much harder for them so by not helping they were in fact strengthening their work force and helping all that more with productivity in the long term.

Elaine would just smile politely and nod and then scowl when the men with their hands in their pockets would leave, snarling, “Must be tough conducting with such a tiny wand.” Before lowering her head and readjusting her glasses and tackling the next pile of papers. But that day was over and if she hurried home she might actually have an hour or two to herself to read before sheer exhaustion and the looming alarm clock of tomorrow’s work day would force her to bed.

Elaina walked hurriedly down the blustery autumn street. The chill wind blew leaves in great swirls about the pavement despite there not being a tree within six blocks and those would have belonged to the half demolished park. Some buildings were going in there despite it being a city park but no one could get any information on how a public park that was cherished by so many could be now being turned into privet business. The government had announced a year ago that a visible government was an endangered government and cited concerns of terrorism as to their new laws and policies that made all government gatherings and decisions closed to the general public and press. It was impossible to find out who had bought the park or how.

Homeland security had arrested an elderly woman who had tried to find out about the park and had refused to take no for an answer. Elaina was now one of the people who stopped in to take care of the missing woman’s five cats. There was no telling when Homeland Security would release the woman as they did not require any kind of warrants or charges to hold her and they often arrested people anymore who spoke out against the government or Wall Street or the church, if you bothered to try and tell them apart that is.

Elaina did not like walking home this late at night. She lived in the same building as the old missing woman lived in which was the apartment building right next to the now half park half pit. Six blocks was a long way to walk at night when you are very tired but the bank had repossessed her car but somehow one of the new laws was making her still make the payments on the bills even though they had taken back the vehicle?! She hadn’t understood that but the bank’s lawyers told her that if she made all her payments she would get the car back. That would be in about five years. But since they had taken it because she had missed one payment she asked what if she did not want to make the payments anymore? Then they would have a warrant issued against her and she would go to jail until she had served the five years left on her car loan. That also was one of the new laws the government had passed, banks could issue their own warrants of search and seizure and arrest. Meanwhile, the bank was renting her car out to a taxi cab company. “If you want to ride in your car all you have to do is hail a cab,” the bank lawyer had joked.

But mostly it was the crime which made her worried about walking home six blocks at night. There were no unemployment benefits anymore. Companies like Wal-mart had banded together to lobby for a law so they wouldn’t have to pay so much in unemployment insurance tax. Once this was passed, they now only hired temps and fired them automatically after six months before they would have to pay them any legal work benefits. Their time clock badges would count down every day at the time clock to their automatic dismissal. “This badge has thirty more days until it expires.”

Unemployment insurance had been the last safety net to keep companies honest. If they developed a policy of hiring and firing lots of employees their unemployment insurance tax would skyrocket. With that gone now they could hire and fire workers in an automated bulk ensuring they would never have to pay them any pay raises or give them any paid holidays or sick pay or pay any insurance premiums. They could hire the same desperate employees over and over for all their lives and never have pay them more than minimum wage, but to keep the labor pool not only poor but desperate they required a six month period between automatic dismissal and re-hire.

This new huge unemployment turnover was now to be footed by tax payer’s money. The workers who were getting fired would have to pay for their own loss of their jobs. It was called; “The Must Work Law” and Republicans were especially proud of it. The problem was that the poor who were now the only ones paying taxes as the rich had made themselves, as well as all government officials, and the church, exempt could not afford it so the program simply shut down. Millions of Americans were out of work at any given moment and desperately doing whatever they could to feed their children and keep their homes. Crime was rampant.

The streets had become dangerous during the day light hours with people running up to semi-trucks that stopped at red lights and cutting open their back doors and throwing out their contents onto the street while others grabbed whatever fell and ran off with it. But at nights it was almost suicidal. The greed at the top simply grunted and demanded the tax payers hire more cops.

Still the area where she worked and lived had not gotten too bad of late. There was a group of extortionist street gangs that collected a fee from every apartment tenant in the immediate area. They called themselves the Gutter Punks and they beat the shit out of anyone who looked out of place which inadvertently kept most of the crime away. Elaina had heard of only four robberies and three rapes in the past four months and that seemed pretty good compared with the surrounding areas of the city and well worth the one hundred dollars in shake down money she paid every month.

Still six blocks every night in the dark six nights a week was playing solo Russian roulette with a lighted stick of dynamite. It was going to go off and as long as you kept playing it was going to go off in your hand sooner than later. And for Elaina Thompson sooner was tonight.

She had made it less than a block to where one of the privet parking garages stood, these privet garages were the new rage across America. A place for the increasingly removed upper class to park their cars in privacy and comfort while they pushed the government to limit drivers licenses and put more public buses out on the roads to ease congestion. There in the shadows of the garage a man was beating a derelict. She recognized the derelict he had showed up about a month ago and been selling trinkets out of a suit case on the sidewalk. Apparently the Gutter Punks hadn’t a problem with him as they seemed to surprisingly ignore the old man.

Elaina froze in the shadows of the building and hoped the man would stop beating the other man and leave but the savage blows kept landing and it did not seem like it was going to end in anything short of death for the old man who lay upon the ground half curled up in a ball as the other man punched and stomped on him. Not knowing what to do Elaina took out her cell phone and a small air horn that they use on boats. No one used rape whistles any more it was like calling a dog to supper to blow one of those, more rapists not cops would show up. She blared the horn and acted like she was talking on the phone. There was no point in trying to call the police they didn’t answer phone calls anymore. Instead you left a message with a service agency and then the cops would call you back, maybe.  She blared the fog horn four times, nearly causing her ears to bleed in the confines of the narrow street. And then put it away and pulled out her Taser.

She continued talking on the phone like someone was talking back to her and she moved toward the man who had been doing all the kicking and beating. He had stopped at the first horn blast and cringed with each blast after that but seemed unconcerned about the Taser or cell phone. She still hadn’t said a word to either man when the standing man leaped at her. It was a sudden leap with both arms and he slammed up against her shoving his throat right into the metal prongs of the Taser. It had gone off more by accident and force of his body weight striking hers than any conscious design on her part. It did not seem to have had much effect, the man just sort of grunted but instead of falling on top of her his body recoiled back as his knees sort of bent and jerked his upper torso away.  But he did not go down. She did.

She was on her hands and knees and the Taser had somehow managed to fall out of her hand and clattered across the sidewalk. She reached for it. Her hand closed upon something heavy. She sat up on her haunches just into me to get a punch in the face. It knocked her glasses off and her whole face and neck felt tingly numb. She fell backwards. He kicked her hard more than once but how many times more she couldn’t tell. She lay for a while in pain and then rolled onto her side. She got up expecting the man to knock her back down but he didn’t. He had gone back to beating the derelict. She rolled up onto her knees and got to her feet. in her right hand she still clutched the chunk of concrete she had grabbed instead of the Taser. Where had a chunk of concrete come from she dazedly wondered. She watched the guy still kicking and stomping on the old man. She realized how much that hurt and raised the chuck of man-made rock above her head and took a stagger forward. She brought it down on the standing man’s skull. There was a sickening crunching thud. The man staggered back clutching his head. He staggered back into the street. He looked at his right hand covered in blood. He clutched his head and staggered around and shambled away disappearing down a side street. She looked down at the rock it wasn’t even bloody. “Taser my ass. Every woman should just carry a fucking rock in her purse.” Suddenly she envisioned every woman carrying a rock in her purse. The rock said, ‘Elaina Thompson Brand Rock’ in words in a circle around a logo of her bashing a guy on the head with a rock, she smiled and her head swam and she dropped the rock and in the next instance she was sitting on her ass upon the sidewalk clutching her head and moaning.

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“Are you alright my dear?” She was looking up from a seated position at the old derelict who was handing her, her glasses. Thank god they weren’t broken! That would have been four months’ salary to replace those. She looked at the old man he seemed very concerned about her which she suddenly found funny as he looked like he had a broken nose and his entire face and hands were cut up and bloody. She should be asking HIM if he was alright.

“I’m fine. Just a bump on the back of my head. You on the other hand look like you need a hospital.” She placed her glasses back on her face.

“I’ve had worse.” The old man replied simply.

She did not press the mater no one had money to see a doctor anymore unless you were one of the wealthy doctors. “What did that man want anyway? He seemed, well, odd.”

“Oh him? He said he wanted to rob me but when he saw I only had junk he decided to beat me for wasting his time. I wouldn’t give him another thought. Say, here. I have something for you. Now, now, no charge I must insist. You saved my life and I want you to have this.” The old man did not return to his brief case and the scattered bobbles that lay strewn about the sidewalk but instead fished a ring out of his jacket pocket or did he remove it from his pinkie and the jacket had just fallen over his hands as he worked it off?

“What? No, it was nothing. I mean, I just did what anyone would have done. I can’t take this. No you keep it. I just wouldn’t feel right.” The ring was a simple affair but not gaudy or obviously cheap as she had half expected.

“I must insist. And you are wrong about that. There are very, very few people in the world who would have risked their lives to do the right thing. I mean just look around you. Do you think it would have gotten so bad if just one person and then a handful of others had stood up at the first collapse and demanded the all those wall street types and their lawyers and their political cronies had been thrown in jail for what they had done? Do you think it would have ended up like this if just one hero was left alive in this country? No heroism like yours is rare and must be acknowledged. Here take it to make an old man feel better about this world.” And he took her left hand and slipped the ring on her finger.

‘That’s probably the only man who will ever put a ring on my finger and it is some disgusting unwashed homeless vagrant who is old enough to be my grandfather, girl you are sad.’ Elaina thought to herself but forced a smile back up to the man who stood up with grunts of pain and then turned to helped her to her feet.

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“We have been walking for hours now! Do you have the slightest idea where you are going?!” The woman who spoke was about four feet in height and she was wearing a bright neon blue dress with bright yellow trim and she was shouting at the man she was following who was smoking a long pipe that was almost as tall as he was which was around four feet ten inches.

The pipe smoker was dressed in a flourished mix of purples and blues and with much exasperation turned upon the speaker and shouted. “If you are tired Madam Bandiecox go on back to the Inn! I know exactly where I am going! Don’t I Master Peckerwood?”

The man turned to the last member of the company who only mopped his brow with a handkerchief and squinted an eye at the man with the large pipe he had been following up and down the forested hill, “If you have gotten us lost Master Stiff I will personally toss you down a well. Head first mind you.”

“Oh that’s the thanks I get. It was all mutually agreed upon that we take this journey for the sake of all. But after all our days of bouncing travels by carriage and pony now that we actually have to do a little leg work up a hill or two everyone is all gripes and complaints and suddenly it is my fault.” The man called Master Stiff turned angrily away from the other two and sucked noisily upon his pipe as he puffed rapid balls of smoke all around him.

The other two eyed each other and the woman put her folded arms under her bosom and pursed her lips while the man with the napkin continued whipping his neck and all three moved a little further to their left and stood upon the crown of the tall hill and looked down into the now opened up view of the forested valley below where one could just make out the roof tops of the small village and inn where they had passed the night. They stood thus in silence and looked upon the almost glowing bright green-yellow grass which the soft wind tussled this way and that and the mix of hardwood trees that side to side wagged their diverse colored tops as if they were marching in place to work themselves up to the task of assaulting the steep round hill before them.

The man with the handkerchief placed his hand on the pipe smokers shoulder and spoke quietly but firmly, “no one is blaming you for anything Master Stiff. But we all knew it was a long shot from the outset. We are not young anymore. Gray and bald and far gone from the years of youth. We simply grasped at the straw of your young childhood memory more in desperate hope than realistic promise. Now that we are here there is no shame in acknowledging that what you once remembered may not have been what really was. It is getting late and it will take us several hours to climb back down these hills and re-ford that brook and make it to the Inn before nightfall.”

“But I tell you I did see it! I came up here several times and wondered at, though I had no idea what it was back then. It was here I tell you. Right here on this very hill. I can’t understand it!” The man stopped smoking his pipe and looked back at the man in a red eyed exasperation.

“Well, maybe it was here once, but it is surely gone now.” The woman looked around them at the forest that closed in at their backs. “Hero’s Forges are long gone from the world. I told you that. No one, other than Tom here back when he was but a boy of four or five has ever claimed to see one. They were in disrepair a dragon age ago and most where sought out and destroyed by every evil you can imagine that has tried to come to power before and since. They are a thing of the long distant past. And best forgotten considering the future that haunts our lands now. We need to spend our energies and time on real world matters now. No more fooling about.”

“But I am telling you I did see one!” Tom Stiff yanked his shoulder from out from under Master Peckerwoods hand and started walking about peering into the wood this way and that. “I came up here and wondered at it several times before my family moved to Ocean Glen. It was many years later that I came across a drawing of one in a book and then I knew what it was. Of course I never had any reason to come all this way back again just to see it, until now. I know it must still be around here. Maybe the wood has grown up and covered it? This hill surely is not half as big as I remember it?”

“We should head back,” the woman leaned in and spoke to the man with the handkerchief who nodded.

“Tom, it will be dark before we make it back to the Inn if we stay any longer. We have searched these hills for hours now. We must-” the man was interrupted by a yelp from Tom who had ventured into the woods a bit further. The woman and man exchanged hurried glances and then ran toward the yelp with shouts to Tom asking if he was alright. The sounds of Toms high pitched voice rang out and the two increased their pace dodging and weaving through the trees.

The two suddenly burst through the thickening forest to find themselves looking upon Tom who was standing upon a slightly higher hill standing next to a large rock arch. “It was one hill over. I remember now,” Tom grinned. “See there is the river down there behind us where it should be.” He gestured but all eyes were glued to the mossy vine covered Hero’s Forge.

“By the god of light. It dose exist. They do exist.” The man put his handkerchief up to his eyes and began to cry.

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Elaina approached her apartment building finally. ‘So much for a few hours of reading,’ she thought to herself and noted that the jarring fall had left her teeth hurting more than her ass? ‘More padding there I guess.’ She blushed at that thought.

As she got closer to the front of her building which was set on the coroner of the block with the park or what was currently left of the park across R.E. Howard Street from it on its north side and the continuing street that lead to her place of employment on its west side. She saw police squad cars parked along the west side Kafka Street and several people in their bathrobes and shirtless shoeless pants which she recognized as fellow tenants of her building. She paused and then hurried her step until she was shoulder to shoulder with the small throng.

She did not have to ask what was going on everyone was very angry and agitated and they muttered mumbled and shouted at her, “They are evicting us. Won’t let us back in or get any of our things! They won’t tell us why.” Elaina found herself standing at the foot of the small concret stair to the large double front door that had lead to the wall of mail boxes and the staircase leading up to the apartments but now only lead to a police officer in full blown riot gear. He looked like a black knight in his full body armor and helmet and gas mask in his left hand he held a large body shield that said; ‘FOR YOUR PROTECTION’ on it and a long lethal shock pole in his right hand. Four more similarly armed police officers also in the riot gear which is how you saw them anymore were lounging around their squad cars chatting with each other and their radio helmet mics. You couldn’t see their faces and they wore no personal identifying markings. When the United States of America passed a law that made it illegal to identify or ‘oust’ a member of the CIA it had passed a law that violated every single constitutional amendment and set the groundwork for its own rapid destruction. Home Land Security extended that law to include its self which by umbrella included all Federal and State Agents in the field and offices. It was only a short matter of time before this illegal luxury of full suspension of all culpability was extended to all police forces and paramilitary hired thugs. The police no longer had badge numbers or names or faces and the only thing worse than staring down the blade of a street thug was the arrival of the police. No matter how bad the situation was it could never be so bad that the arrival of the law wouldn’t instantly make the matter a thousand times worse.

Behind the police officer just over his shoulder taped to the front door was an eviction notice that the cop was not letting anyone close enough to read. “You just can’t kick us out of our homes like this.” He ignored her and she confusedly fumed and suddenly thought of the old woman’s five cats which she could see pressing their faces up against her downstairs apartment window. “There are pets still inside what about those?” He just looked at her, or at least his helmeted black tinted goggles and face mask with gas mask tilted slightly downward in her direction. He said nothing and did not move. “Look why don’t you do something useful for a change instead of kicking innocent people out of their homes. I was just attacked down the street there. Why don’t you go find and arrest that guy who attacked me?!”

“What are you complaining about… it’s not like he killed you or anything.” The police officers voice was gritty from talking through the filter and he looked back up into the space over her head ignoring her.

But she thought she recognized the voice, “say… aren’t you… one of those Gutter Punk goons?” She had just caught herself from saying ‘Carlos’ that would have been ‘ousting’ or publicly identifying a cop. You could get five years in the prison mandatory labor farms for that. The police officer went on ignoring her and she looked back at the police lounging around their squad cars and had the sudden realization that all of them might be former Gutter Punks she could almost see them without their black body armor and helmets sitting on the car hoods smoking cigarettes and muttering to one another. The amateur shake down extortionists had gone pro.

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“Are you sure you know what you are doing?” Madam Bandiecox was shaking her head. “No one has used one of these things since our great grandfather’s time. How do you even know it still works?”

Master Peckerwood looked up, his face appearing under his arched supporting left arm as he leaned down with his right arm yanking roots away from the great blue stone arch where it stood upon black stone pedestals and spoke quickly to the frowning woman. “Madam Bandiecox you may be the official representative of the council on this expedition but I am the expert on Hero Forges. Thank you very much! Now Tom, see if you can get some more of that brush cleared away and get that bird nest down from there.”

“Humph. It looks like nothing more than a pile of rocks and weeds to me,” Madam Bandiecox folded her arms under her breasts and shoved her nose in the air.

“Madam you are underfoot!” Master Peckerwood shouted as he waved his arms at the woman who was standing stock still in his path until she reluctantly moved back to let him pass and continue yanking debris from the large stone structure. “Why don’t you do something useful, like throwing yourself down a hill repeatedly until your neck breaks! I have had it with you and your precious council. You were sent here by that busy body of gossips to watch their interests in this matter. Well, we have found it! The very last Hero’s Forge in existence! Now how will it be if I go back to those sweet dear backstabbing harpies of yours and tell your council that having found the last Hero’s Forge you, one Madam Bandiecox got in the way! So I the only living scholar with the knowledge of how to work such a device could not do my job! Now, what would your precious sweet heart council of best friends for life do to you then, eh?” The excited man had been yanking weeds and tree limbs and rocks and piles of leaves and half rotted bird and desiccated wasp nests from the stones as he spoke but now he shoved his long nose and chin into the startled woman’s red face and squinted at her. The woman flustered and fumed and the man spit his next words right into her face, “be gone baggage, you are worthless here. Like all politicians you serve no real purpose when real purpose is what is needed.” And he turned from the startled woman who confusedly stepped several steps back and gave a hurt look at Tom who grinned widely at her before with a wink returning back to his work.

“Now… let us see what we shall see.” Master Peckerwood had taken off his backpack and his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Tom had taken off his back pack and as evening was now falling he had rummaged out a lantern and lit it as well as fashioning a torch which he had jabbed firmly into the ground.

Master Peckerwood held a large book nearly half his size before him and flipped through its thick heavy pages. “Now… here we are. Perhaps a little light,” And he snapped his fingers and a small golden ball of light appeared above the pages of the book just above his brow. “That’s better. Don’t want to get this wrong. That would most certainly be dangerous. Hmmm,” He paused and rubbed his long pointed chin. “Ah! Tom, take that cylinder there that I laid upon the ground and fit it into the exposed gear slot that was under the slab we removed.”

Tom picked up the glass and brass cylinder that was full of liquids and small gears and cradling it walked up to the side of the pitted stone arch and where a plate of stone had been removed exposing a series of bronze workings, he carefully fitted the cylinder in place. There was a loud clicking sound when this was done and the birds in the trees around them fell silent.

“Yes, that’s better. Strange device here these Hero Forges, a mix of mechanics and magic, as only the ancients could pull off, but let’s see if we can accomplish the same without blowing up half the forest.” He cleared his throat and began to read the incantation.

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“But I haven’t done anything wrong?!” Elaina was shouting and squirming against the handcuffs and the armored police officer escorting her to the open back door of the squad car. She suddenly remembered that whenever the police wanted to incarcerate someone one of the tricks they would do is put them in handcuffs and when the surprised innocent person would naturally struggle against this the police latter would simply charge them with resisting arrest so they could hold them without qualms of rebuttal. Elaina began shouting. “I am not resisting arrest! I am not resisting arrest!” Over her shoulders at the murmuring crowd of former tenants milling about the front of the apartment building as the armored thug clamped a hand on the top of her head and shoved her into the backseat of the squad car.

“Great,” Elaina scowled as the back car door slammed shut leaving her alone in the squad car. Suddenly she recollected stories of women being taken into the police station and once there raped by the police or by informants for days on end. And she became very frightened and started to cry. The Miranda Act had been repealed. The politicians had said it set the guilty free. And the government no longer paid for lawyers for the general public which had become very expensive, so expensive in fact that few lawyers were available to the average citizen, even to those who could afford their fee or raise it through the bail bondsmen services. Most lawyers worked for corporations or the government. Every police station had one for its men and every company and of course every church.  All paid by tax payer’s money.

Suddenly the car was rocking. The police were clashing with the crowd and soon more armored and armed police were arriving in their plated squad cars. Elaina cringed as the window was smashed and pebbles of glass rained down on her and now the violence and shouting was almost deafening as gunfire rang out as the police began to systematically shoot down the unarmed half naked crowd.

Elaina was crying even harder and then the ring on her finger began to burn and hurt and the car suddenly seemed full of light even as her vision blurred and faded and a police officer was bending down and looking through the broken window and he raised up his riffle and jabbed the gun butt into her face knocking her to the floor boards. The car door opened and everything went black.

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It was early morning and the old man Master Peckerwood had his shirt stripped off his gnarled old silver haired chest and gnarled arms covered in tattoo runes and sigils and glyphs which now glowed as his skin drenched in sweat glistened in the newly rising sun. His teeth were set in a wide grimace and he held his arms before him as if he were holding large stone sphere in front of him. His whole body vibrated with extreme exertion. And his booted feet had sunk three inches into the ground.

Tom scurried about the stone arch where new mechanical panels had popped forth. He twiddled knobs and pulled stiff levers and tapped at gages and referred constantly to diagrams in the large book that Master Peckerwood had once held but now Tom clasped to his chest. A little ways away Madam Bandiecox lay upon the ground snoring.

The Hero’s Forge was several circular stone plates set upon each other of lessening dimensions both in thickness and circumference so that it was a series of steps leading up to a large high stone arch. This arch was enclosed on one side creating a shallow niche. The stone niche was just large enough to hold a man on horseback. And it was in this niche that now Tom discerned a low glow.

“I think it is working!” Tom shouted over his shoulder to the grunting shuddering Peckerwood as he took several backward steps toward the sweating old man.

The black maw of the archway suddenly held a white ball of light that crackled with lightning and then exploded leaving tendrils of smoke and the stench of burnt ozone. The old man half collapsed and Tom raced to his side awkwardly trying to support him and the large book at the same time. The two of them looked at the dark recess of the Hero’s Forge where nothing stood.

“Told you,” Madam Bandicox hawked a snoot full of phlegm onto the ground and snickered. “Complete waste of time. Those Hero’s Forges were nothing but fairy tales and myth. I will be heading back now to make my report.” The old woman tugged on her skirt waist band around her fat belly and sneered at the dejected looking two old men. “That is, if I have your permission Master Peckerwood.” She gave a snide mocking bow with her hand moving from her fat waist to her cloth headband. “To relay your failure to all,” And she cackled and was turning when she stopped suddenly and frowned up at the archway.

The two exhausted men followed her gaze and their eyes went wide with astonishment even as the old crones narrowed in disbelief. For there, slowly, cautiously, emerging from the inky black niche was a tall woman with short blonde hair.

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“It’s a trick. Some kind of con you and Tom are trying to pull on the council to fund more of your nonsense,” Madame Bandiecox was shouting at Master Peckerwood and Master Stiff’s backs as they both inched forward toward the woman who after blinking around at the forest and sky had apparently just noticed them and recoiled slightly and froze with a shocked face as she stared at them.

They froze too and then Master Peckerwood muttered to Tom, “I expect the process of creation has rattled her somewhat. Best be cautious at first.”

Tom had his face close to the old man’s as he was still half supporting his weak frame and he nodded his understanding.

“I thought you had it set to create a male Hero?” Master Peckerwood whispered into Tom’s ear.

“I did. Or at least I thought I did. Those controls and settings are a might confusing,” Tom whispered back.

The blonde woman suddenly looked down and realized she was naked and her mouth went into a wide ‘O’ shape as she clutched her right arm over her nipples and her left hand over her crotch and blushed.

“That is most certainly not a man,” Master Peckerwood muttered and then cleared his throat. “Best introduce ourselves.” And he nodded at Tom to proceed who in turn opened his mouth into an ‘O’ shape and then pointed at himself in shock which considering he had his right arm around the old man’s waist and his right arm around the large book meant he simply ended up jabbing the books corner into his chin.

“Wha-? Me? You got to be kidding. Look Bandiecox is the diplomat surely she is more qualified to welcome a new hero to our realm.” Tom nodded his head over his shoulder where the woman was busy squinting her eyes at the strange naked woman and twisting her chin this way and that with her open and closing hands hanging at her sides as if she were trying to disperse the woman as one would a questionable thought.

“That woman is not qualified to welcome a roast to the supper table. Now go on Tom you are the youngest and most able.” Master Peckerwood nodded at the blonde girl who had taken a half step back in the shadows and now were intently watching the three short figures before her as well as casting quick glances around the corner of the stone arched niche.

“I am almost a hundred and sixty,” Tom stammered in opposition.

“Yes, nearly half my age, now go and speak with her before she re-enters the Forge and vanishes.” Master Peckerwood was now pushing on Tom’s back.

“Can she do that?” Tom asked alarmed as Master Peckerwood struggled to pull the book out of Tom’s numb clutching hands.

“Just go!” Master Peckerwood gave up trying to wrestle the book free and now placed both hands on Yom’s shoulder and pushed.

Tom sunk his heels into the sod. “But I don’t think I speak Hero.” Master Peckerwood gave Tom a swift kick in the pants that sent him staggering forward.

Tom inched his way up to the foot of the stone dials and cleared his throat, “ah, pardon, pardon O’ Hero but I was just wanting to extend a greetings of the formal sort to you and welcome you to our realm and thank you kindly for helping us and all, um, that sort of thing.” Tom hesitated then smiled and then tried to bow but the book made that rather awkward and then he looked over his shoulder smiling at Master Peckerwood who slapped his forehead and moaned.

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Elaina woke up in darkness. Her head hurt and she pressed a hand against her forehead. Then she remembered that she had been handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car. But the handcuffs were apparently gone. As was the squad car and all the people. It was deathly silent. Had she died? She heard birds singing. She lowered her hand and raised herself up to a semi-sitting position. Her hands and her left thigh bearing her weight as she half leaned forward and to the left. A stone floor cold, ‘Am I in police cell?’ She wondered. And then she felt the warmth on her back and turned her head. There was a large arch of day light just a few feet behind her! Her vision was slowly returning. She half crawled half attempted to rise to her feet so that by the time she reached the archway of stone she was standing leaning on the archway its self.

A strange woodland lay before so very vibrant and rich with colors and smells. The sky seemed to glow with blue and the leaves of the trees were orange and red and yellow and purple and the trunks white and blue-black. The grass was a brilliant green-yellow and the sun had just risen not more than an hour or two a go so fresh and damp was the air and… there were two little men looking at her! A third short man was standing behind the first two and glaring at her with obvious loathing and hate and confusion. The two men in front of her were shocked and wide eyed and puzzled with a touch of awe. She wondered what the strange short men were staring at her so intently and she looked down and saw she was utterly naked.

She squealed and clamped her arms and hands over her naked body and looked around for her clothes. ‘Where am I? Where are my clothes? How did I get here? Where is here?’ Her mind raced in a circle around the same questions and worries and then she noticed one of the short men had hesitantly ventured a little closer down to the edge of the round staircase before her and he muttered and spoke but though she understood his words to be English they made little sense to her.

The second fellow came forward, he was not wearing a shirt and he had a lot of tattoos, maybe he was a biker or gang member. He looked old but wide in the shoulders and well-muscled. He muttered angrily with the first fellow who had spoken who held a large book tightly in front of his body, and then the half-naked man bowed and spoke, “Welcome new born hero of the forge, we greet you to our lands.”

“Uh, where am I and where are my clothes?” Elaina cautiously spoke.

The shirtless man with the tats turned to the other fellow and muttered excitedly, “see she can speak! Brain dead my ass I known my incantations!”

Elaina frowned and cleared her throat, “ah, my clothes? Look I am Elaina, Elaina Thompson. Do any of you know how I got here or where here is?”

The two men left off bickering and turned to listen to her and then the shirtless man turned to the other man with the book and spoke to him again, “did you give her a name? I don’t remember any of us concurring on a name just yet.” The man with the book shook his head and frowned. “Curious,” the shirtless man strode around the corner of the niche and the man with the book smiled at her and then quickly followed him.

Elaina opened her mouth to speak but it seemed surprisingly hard to carry on a conversation when you are entirely naked. So she closed her mouth returned the scowl stare of the third squat short fat man who was standing a short distance ahead of her and then cursing under her breath and making sure her hands and fore arm were covering all they could she inched out of the niche with her thighs firmly clamped together and around its corner until she could see both of the old men who were prodding and poking at several copper and brass and bronze gears and dials and switches that seemed imbedded in the stone work that made up the arch and its niche. “Uhm, look I hate to be a bother but my clothes?”

“I don’t understand it? It is set for a man and there is no name programed in. in fact all the background and personal data fields are still blank. How very peculiar?” The old biker was fiddling with toothed gears and spinning wheels with symbols upon them.

The old man with the book was looking up at her and he began to vigorously tap the shirtless man on the shoulder who turned to him. “She wants her gear.”

The shirtless man looked up at her and then recoiled, “oh yes of course. That spawns separately. I thought it was best considering there was no time for fine tuning and such. Yes, let me… ah here we are!” He grabbed a leaver and gripped it flower petals closed and gave it a firm yank. There was a grinding and then a grating of stone. “There we are.”

Elaina had turned her head as the sound had emanated behind her back and retracing her steps into the dark niche of the archway she just made out a new stone panel had opened and revealed piles of garments. She move a bit more hurriedly than she would have liked to them and with thighs still clamped together and several peeks over her shoulder to ascertain that she was far back enough in the niche that no one could see her without first ascending the steps, she began to concentrate on the garments before her and make heads or tails out of them.

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“Most strange. She does not match any of the settings. Not a jot!” Master Peckerwood had put back on his shirt which had been hanging by its shirt tails that had remained tucked in his britches and replaced his bracers and was stroking his long chin.

“Did we get it wrong?” Tom was looking from the book back to the gears and switches.

“Most certainly not!” Master Peckerwood snarled indignantly. “It must be a fault in the mechanics somewhere. I mean well, it is all so old and unkempt for so very long. A bit of vagrancies must be expected.”

“Should we try again?” Tom was getting a bit nervous.

“And how shall we do that? That master cylinder you placed in the Hero’s Forge was the last of its kind. Taken from, er, I mean borrowed from the museum in MaKesh. The construction and spells to create it are all lost to us and it takes a fresh cylinder for each hero creation. No we have forged our last hero of this age. She will have to do.” Master Peckerwood turned around to where Madam Bandiecox had just arrived at the hunched over backs of the two men.

Madam Bandiecox jerked a thumb over her shoulder and snarled, “Your princess is FINALY out of her boudoir. Care to see if she can justify this trip with some hero monster bashing or are you two boys still tinkering with your toys here?”

Madam Bandiecox glared at both men and then with skirt hem in hands turned and made her way back to the front of the Hero’s Forge.

“By the god of light, I hate that contemptible woman.” Master Peckerwood muttered under his breath as both he and Master Stiff shuffled along after Madame Bandiecox to the front of the arch where at the top of the steps Elaina stood waiting in her new outfit.

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Elaina had been puzzled and then flustered by the array of clothes that she found before her. Nothing seemed familiar to her other than a pair of panties. She had thankfully breathed a sigh of relief upon finding them and then lost no time in wiggling them on. The panties fit tight and were of the style called ‘low-leg’ which meant they were worn with the hem band running horizontal across the lower stomach and buttocks at roughly the top of the pubic mound and across the point where the hips and buttocks joined. The cup of the panties covered very little which was irrelevant as the material was so sheer as to be utterly see-through.

She had worn a pair like this though not quite so micro in size one night when she had decided to add some spice to her dead end eight year relationship with her boyfriend. Her friends had been pestering her that dating the same guy for eight years and not getting any kind of hint of a marriage proposal was somehow scandalous. She had then spent several rough months trying to get some kind of firm future commitment from him and instead got dumped. That was at the same time she had lost her first career job. Her subsequent re-locating and moving to her second career job had meant the loss of those well-meaning friends as well. Recently she had heard that one of these friends was now dating her ex-boyfriend. She hadn’t time or inclination to find another boyfriend or group of new friends to replace those she lost.

She looked through the odd remnants of clothing for a bra next but found nothing that resembled such. Considering she sported a full swollen round firm double KK-cup breast size she seldom went bra-less but it looked like today was going to be one of those jiggle fest and pokie nipple days as her nipples always seemed to be hard on her puffy areolas.

Even as she pulled out pieces of garments and turned them inside out and outside in in puzzlement she couldn’t but help noticing that her limbs seemed somehow ‘tighter’? Her arms felt solid instead of sort of flabby as they had for the past few years and her butt definitely seemed more… pert. It had no sag to it at all. Likewise her breasts which had always been surprisingly firm and jutting considering how massive they were on her curvy frame now seemed somehow even firmer and more, well, jittery as if she was suddenly sixteen again and her tight body impossibly full and opulent and defying all effects of gravity’s tug?! Her hair felt fuller and softer and her pubes were definitely corn silk golden and thick and sunset cloud like than they had been in many years. She could only marvel at her suddenly trimmed up and firmed up body and the supple softness of her skin. She simply shook her head and laughed as she continued sorting through the strange stringy clothes.

As she tried putting arms and then legs through this or that cluster of loops and small bits of cloth only to take them off and twist them around to try in a different way, she began to notice that there were not one but three distinct set of clothing and she noted that before each pile of cloth garments a set of armor and weapons were placed on niche shelves above them. They were old time looking garments sort of medieval but not historic but of a fantasy meld of modern and ancient. She had simply dug through each pile as if it were one in her hurry to dress but now she stopped and sorted them back into their original piles and now as her eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark she could identify each outfit to its generic class by the weapons and or armor above it. “It must be some kind of renaissance fair?!”

There was a bow with quiver of arrows and below that a leather-ish outfit of a sort of mini-dress halter top with a small feathered cap. The archer outfit had no panties what so ever and that dress hem looked awfully short?! She tried to put it on anyway but somehow it always twisted and wouldn’t go on? Then she had a thought and she removed the micro-panties as they were from a different set of clothes and as if my magic the archer attire went on easily?!

“You can’t mix sets of clothing. Somehow it won’t let you.” She bit her lip and checked out the archer clothing she was now wearing. It was far from historically accurate by any means and in fact it seemed less designed for walking around in a public renaissance fair and more for flirting in a bed room! Her bust was slipping nipples right and left out of the deep cleavage top and the hem of that short skirt was only a thumb width above her naked clit! “I will be flashing boob and pussy with each step?! No way in hell I can walk around in this slut outfit! One little gust of wind and it’s ‘hello Dolly!’ Let’s try on one of these other outfits.”

The only set of panties belonged to a knight set. It was mostly armor taken off the shelf above the panties and gloves and boots. The armor took a bit to figure out but it ended up covering less than the archer costume did! There were metal shoulder pads with raised up metal ridges to protect he side of the head. There where full metal arm pieces that covered the bicep and fore arm and back of the hands to the knuckles. There were metal plate thigh pieces and shin guards and boots. There was this little odd metal skirt thing that covered the sides of her hips and the back of her butt but only hung down about halfway on her ass cheeks and left her barely panty covered crotch fully exposed. There was a sort of chest piece of metal that strapped in place and looked like some kind of metal bikini top. It covered little more than her nipples though and she noticed that despite its digging into her soft breast flesh her nipples had a tendency  with a little moving about to slip out of their small coverings and play peekaboo. The costume was completed with a cool looking head band and a shield and a sword. The sword had a harness but the belt did little to cover any of her already exposed body. “This is a perv’s fantasy outfit,” she noted, “and wouldn’t do much good for protection in a real fight.”

The next garment was obviously a witch’s outfit. There was a large wooden staff where the staff whirled into a curl at the top. And a large oversized pointed hat with a brim that stretched out more than a foot past her shoulders. There was a high collar cape and some pointy stiletto heel shoes. There was some purple and black knee high and a black garter which she put on her right thigh. There was a black bustier that had a built in demi-cup shelf bra that pushed her breasts all the way to almost her chin into the most insane cleavage she had ever seen and did nothing to cover her nipples which were left jutting out quivering ahead of her with every stride. Her hairy blonde pussy was left entirely exposed. The only other pieces to the wardrobe was a neck choker with a black cameo sculpted in the shape of a cat, and pair of fingerless opera gloves that went up to her shoulders. Along with the staff there was a large book with the words, “MY FIRST GRIMOIRE SPELL BOOK” with a small wax seal and ribbon that said; “DO NOT BREAK SEAL UNLESS THIS IS YOUR SET SELECTION CHOICE.” Elaina set the book down next to the staff. It was so dark in the nice of the archway that it was difficult to decide what of the three sets of garments she should choose. “A full size mirror would be nice and a little light.” And even as she said that there was a sliding of stone and a full size mirror appeared next to the bench with the clothing and weapon accessory niches and a dim golden light ‘popped’ on just above her.

“This must be some kind of dream. That guy hit me with a gun butt to my chin, cold cocked me and I am lying there in the back seat of that squad car dreaming all of this. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Or else heaven and hell don’t live up to the hype. Well if this is a dream then nothing I do here can make any real difference and if I am about to wake up in some prison cell to be gang raped by a bunch of cops and informants getting their monthly perk package then I had better enjoy this.”

Elaina retried on the other two wardrobes and tried out their accessories in the mirror and the dim yellow light. “Well if this were the real waking world there would be no question. I would take the sexy archer costume because even without panties it at least tries to sort of cover the goods. The sexy Robin Hood elf bit is hot and still cute. But if this IS a dream and I am going to have to like try and use this shit to kill a dragon or something. Well a bow with a quiver of… ten arrows just isn’t going to cut it.”

She saw there was something on the bow curve a small metal plaque and she squinted to read it; ‘THE PLUS ONE SWORD COMPANY… PLUS+ONE BOW.’ “Hmmm, that’s odd.” She set the bow down and picked up the sword and sure enough there was a small area in the filigree scroll etching where the blade joined the hilt that had the etched words; ‘THE PLUS ONE SWORD COMPANY… PLUS+ONE SWORD.’  She reached for the staff and sure enough there upon the shaft; ‘THE PLUS ONE SWORD COMPANY… PLUS+ONE WITCHES STAFF’ was carved in tiny letters.

“Strange… I wonder?” She began to search for tags on the costumes. And each had one; ‘THE FANBOYZ ARMOR COMPANY-THE LESS IT COVERS THE MORE IT PROTECTS… FAN-TITS-SEE KNIGHT ARMOR.’ And ‘THE FANBOYZ ARMOR COMPANY-THE LESS IT COVERS THE MORE IT PROTECTS… FAN-TITS-SEE ELF ARMOR.’ And ‘THE FANBOYZ ARMOR COMPANY-THE LESS IT COVERS THE MORE IT PROTECTS… FAN-TITS-SEE WITCHES ARMOR.’ “Must be some company in Jersey,” she decided. “Or Iowa,” yeah every perv she had ever met had been from Iowa. “Must be all that corn?”

“Well, decision time… what will it be? The knight outfit has panties, though they are micro-bikini low leg ones that are see through and on constant full blown display. Got like two and half inches of pubes on show above them; and my tits are just falling out of this barbarian bra thing with each step. Having a shield is nice and the sword feels reassuring if I have to do any real fighting in this dream and my gut tells me I will. But the armor is sort of heavy and I move a bit slow in it and besides every chick dose the bikini armor sexy knight thing in her teens at some Halloween party, that’s how she gets her first boyfriend who actually calls.”

The elf archer set is sexy and kind of cool. Green is not my favorite color but even with that cleavage squeeze going on there I have more of a shot of keeping my strawberries undercover than the knight costume. The no panties and the miniskirt is a teeth grinding combination with that but I love the little thigh high boots and I guess a bow means killing shit before it can reach you and take a bite out of your arm. Still only ten arrows, that bites not even a dagger or anything as backup wow that sucks. Comes with a big green acorn called, ‘LORE”, wrapped up with another one of those wax seals and ribbons warning you not to break the seal unless this is your final choice. I wonder why the knight didn’t have one? Ah, here it is. A scroll sealed in wax with the same ribbon with the ‘keep out’ bullshit and the scroll says… ‘HERALDRY.’ So you pick a costume and then crack the seal on your user manual. Nice.”

“I keep coming back to the witch’s costume. I always dressed up as a witch for Halloween as a kid. But of them all the witches costume is the most blatant when it comes to revealing the naughty bits. I mean there are no see-through panties, or let’s pretend this mini-skirt has you covered, just full blown naked pussy purring to every passerby. And the tits are like WOW just shoved in everyone’s face. I mean I thought the cleavage of the little elf number was a bit much, but this platform demi-cup shoves my tits almost up to my freaking chin and there must be some springs or something to that platform because just breathing has my girls dancing the rumba and don’t even get me started on walking! Shit! It’s like two giant yo-yo’s on my chest! I damn near come close to giving myself a black eye every time I take a step! And running is definitely out of the question I could knock myself unconscious in this outfit. And well, I mean, there is no possibility of nipple slips because my whole tit is just there right on full display. I mean wow my nipples look like boat prowls! Or canons ready to fire! Ha-ha! The other costumes sort of hint and play peep show but this baby just says, ‘here take a good long stare!’ Hmm, I would never wear anything like this not even in the bed room, not even for a guy who had the guts to propose. But this is a dream and well any girl that has it has always wanted to show it… so? I don’t know… there are no weapons at all. Unless I wonk someone on the head with my staff, I guess? I always have loved witches I mean I have them as my wallpapers my lap top at home and my computer at work. But I mean really! I am freaking naked here! I mean, really?! Ha-ha!” sighs.

“I wish I could choose them all instead of having to choose just one.” No sooner had she spoken then all the clothes vanished even the witch’s outfit was wearing along with all the weapons and accessories. The empty shelves folded up back into the wall and after a moment of silence a small single panel of stone slid open and a little stone shelf slid out. On the stone shelf was a single ring sitting on top of a tomb with a folded loose note lying next to them.

The folded up piece of paper read. ‘YOU ARE VERY CLEVER. NO ONE EVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE.’

*************************************************************************************

“But she’s still naked?! I don’t understand. Where is your armor and weapons? Didn’t it work?” Master Peckerwood looked at the smiling beaming nude woman who stood at the top of the stairs under the arch smiling broadly and blushing with pride and a bit of embarrassment as she held her hands and forearms over her naked breasts and crotch.

“It worked. I have my weapons and costumes right here,” and the hour glass shaped blonde held up a large ring with a white opal. She reached up and turned the outer circle of the ring and the opal turned green. Instantly she was wearing the elf armor and had her bow and quiver on her back. A wind blew and she quickly tried to hold down her skirt which flashed her golden snatch at everyone. Then she held up the ring and twisted it again and it turned blue and she was in her knight armor with sword and shield and then she held up the ring and twisted it again and the opal went black and she was wearing her witches outfit with staff and hat. She held up her hand and turned the ring and it went back to white and she was stark naked again. “Ta-dah!”

“You’re missing some colors, but you can earn those by defeating monsters. They will open up new types of classes as well as variations of your current costumes with different weapons, but you will learn all about that in time,” Madame Bandiecox nodded. Both Tom and Master Peckerwood turned with surprised looks over their shoulders at Madame Bandiecox who in turn scowled at them, “what? You think you are the only ones to have opened a book?” She looked back up to the naked blushing girl who was once again covering herself wither hands and forearms, “For now you best select one costume for our journey back to the inn. The, er, green one seemed the most… modest.”

The short haired blonde girl nodded and turned her ring to green and was in an instant wearing her elf armor with bow and arrows and her little feathered hat. She came down the stairs quickly toward the trio smiling and blushing with both her hands held in front of her crotch trying to keep the short mini-skirt hem down.

The man with the book still clutched to his chest made a few half bows and smiled and spoke at her when she had descended to about hands/crotch level with his face. “I’m Stiff!”

“Considering the way I am dressed I am not surprised,” the woman demurely replied.

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Madam Bandiecox walked next to Elaina as the group walked back to the inn. There was an almost steady breeze now that twirled the verdant grass and the short blonde woman’s skirt hem. Madam Bandiecox eyed the young looking woman who was having trouble keeping her skirt hem in place and spoke to her, “you have any idea of where you are or why you were created, heroine?”

Elaina had one hand tightly gripping her short skirts hem with its wrist firmly pressed against her pubic mound and the other hand tightly gripping her short skirts hem in the back with its wrist firmly pressed in the center of her proud full buttocks. She was blushing and far more nervous about the pussy flashing skirt than she had thought she would be despite all of this being a dream. She half turned her head and looked down at the squat fat old Madam Bandiecox on her left and realized for the first time she was a woman?! “Ah, you know I didn’t realize there would be so much walking in a dream. I mean, usually my dreams just sort of Segway from one bit to another and they don’t tend to really carry over the same ideas from one section to the next. I never had one that was so, so, well sensual. I mean the colors or so brilliant and intense and the smells are so powerful and rich and the wind is so, so, kind of chilly where it’s blowing if you know what I mean.” She blushed even more and agave a quick weak laugh.

“I thought as much,” Madam Bandiecox muttered up to her. “Brains scrambled. Well I don’t blame you. It’s that old fools fault.” She nodded at Master Peckerwood’s back who was excitedly talking to Master Tom Stiff as they walked ahead of the two women. “It’s obvious he hadn’t a clue what he was doing, but then again we all thought it was just a wild goose chase. None of us on the council well, we didn’t take it seriously at all… grasping at straws as it were. So that sort of makes it all out fault too. Oh well it is what it is and maybe we can use you and maybe we can’t. But things are so desperate that we might as well try.”

The short squat woman took out a small pipe and opened a pouch on her wide hips and filled the pipe and lit it by snapping her fingers and set it in the corner of her yellow tooth mouth. “Well girl you sort of have it right. This here land is called Dreaming. Or The Dreaming Lands if you like, sort of depends on which map you look at. I never read up on those Hero Forges, no one has, except that old goat. Each ruler or upstart either good or evil did all they could to seek out and destroy each Hero’s Forge and anything written about them. No one feels very happy about trying to rule a land where any Tom, Harry, Dick, can whip up a hero in the kitchen so to speak and challenge an unpopular edict or law or tax.”

The woman had tendrils of orange smoke coming out of her large nostrils and as the orange smoke touched her long gray hair small birds emerged and angrily flew up to circle above her head chirping sharply. “But I heard tales of the Hero’s Forge as a lass. Everyone has. And I know it is rare for a hero or heroine as the case may be to be created that can multiclass as you can with that ring of yours. So all of that said, can you actually use any of your weapons or have any clue as to how your skills work?”

“Ah, well, I, er, that is,” Elaina was still struggling with her skirt hem which seemed to have a mind of its own and one of the small birds, an orange one, seemed to have taken an interest in peeking up the back of her fist clamed skirt hem. ‘That’s not your nest buddy,’ Elaina thought and then replaced her worried look with a blushing forced smile back at the old woman who was still waiting for an answer. “Well, when I picked the ring there was this large book which had a wax seal which I then broke open. Inside was a section on each costume, or class as it called them, as well as the weapons. I didn’t read it instead it just vanished and it sort of put all the information instantly into my head. You know, dream stuff. So I really don’t know if just by reading something if I can do something I mean normally I couldn’t but in a dream.”

“Yes, in Dreaming books are powerful; and reading one grant’s skills. There are not many books left in the lands and most cannot be read by most people. But let us see if you can knock that apple out of that tree there with an arrow.” The woman’s head was wreathed in an orange cloud of smoke now and she stopped walking and nodded at a large red apple far up in a tree to their left.

Elaina looked at the apple it was not an easy shot even if she had the slightest idea how to use of bow which of course she had never picked one up before an hour ago. “I only have the ten arrows. I think it was ten arrows?” Elaina let go of the back of her skirt and twisted and reached to the quiver on her back to count the arrows. The back of her skirt flew up and the little orange bird gave out a loud wolf-whistle. Elaina screamed at the bird, “Get out of here you perv bird!” While swatting at it with her bow.

“Hmm, just as it thought. By selecting all of the classes initially available to you, the skill level and the knowledge of each have been significantly lessened than if you had taken just one. But don’t worry I think with some practice and a bit of additional information that can readily enough be surpassed to make it less detrimental to the task at hand. First off; do not worry so much about your arrows. As long as you hit the target you are aiming at the arrow that was shot will instantly return to your quiver. Likewise any arrow that misses the target you are aiming at will be lost forever. Try to hit the trunk of that nearby tree first.” The old woman blew a smoke ring at a closer tree where it hovered as a target.

Elaina hesitated and then drew an arrow and nocked it and raised up her bow. This meant her skirt hem instantly flew up and flapped about her narrow waist utterly exposing her sex but she gritted her teeth and concentrated as she drew the bow and let fly. The arrow pierced the center of what had become a bull’s-eye of what had become a series of concentric orange smoke rings that the old woman had continued blowing as Elaina had readied her bow and arrow. “I hit it!”

“Now count your arrows in your quiver,” the old woman almost hummed as she spoke.

“There are ten, but the arrow is still there in the trunk of the tree.” Elaina re-shouldered her bow and set her hands back down to clamp her flapping skirt hem back in place as she walked up to the tree and yanked out the arrow. The arrow vanished as soon as she pulled it free, but the wound made in the tree remained behind and she counted and still had her original ten arrows.

“Clever, eh? That was developed by the Elvin battle mage El-Azore. He got tired of people yanking his deadly arrows out of his opponent’s corpses and shooting them back at him. Such quivers where once standard equipment for the Wood Elf armies, but that was long ago and now such things are rare. That quiver on your back is a ten arrow quiver it will only hold those ten original arrows and as long as you hit what you aim at the arrow will return instantly to your quiver upon striking its target. That is a hunter’s quiver; the Wood Elf armies used quivers of twenty and twenty-five.” The woman pointed at Elaina with her pipe steam from her now head concealing cloud of orange smoke. “Now, let’s try hitting that apple. I am famished.”

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In a small storage shed behind the inn Madam Bandiecox had Elaina shooting targets with her arrows and swinging her sword and guarding with her shield for hours while the old woman munched on food and drink while she lazily swung in a hammock barking out orders and critiquing the woman’s efforts until it was too dark to see. Then the old crone had fetched torches and kept her at it until her stomach was groaning and her arms ached and her whole body was one big bruise. Then and only then did she let Elaina collapse onto a wooden stool next to the old men who were still pouring over books and scrolls and maps and arguing about this or that.

But there was little rest for even as she tried to eat her strange meal of half burnt leg of something or other?! Master Peckerwood plied her mercilessly with questions. “But that is not possible, my dear. You cannot have any previous memories of some other place or world. I mean we just made you in the Hero Forge yesterday! Oh, this must be some terrible fault in the decayed mechanics of the forage.”

Elaina had given up on trying to be proper with her eating as every time she raised any food or drink to her lips someone had asked her a question and the starving girl had just started shoving food in her gab and talking with her mouth full. “I can’t help that. I am telling you that I was there and now I am here and I was there for all my life and I have been here now for what is turning out to be a very long unbroken dream!”

“Impossible! What was the name of this so called world of yours then, eh?”

“Earth.”

“Earth?! Humph! That’s earth!” And the flustered old man pointed down at the wooden floorboards of the inn.

“Well, it is the waking world and this is a dream. I think? Never had one last so long before and without any kind of break into other things. Anyway this is a dream and that is the waking world.” She quickly shoveled more food into her mouth hoping the man would stop pestering her with such stupid questions. This was HER dream after all why was everyone in it bossing her around?!

“Do you any kind of proof that you came from this other Waking World? That it exists at all?”

“Well… no I- wait! I have this ring. See when I woke up I had this ring on my finger that the old man I rescued gave me. He gave it to me because he said I saved his life and I was a… hero? That’s odd. I wonder if that has something to do with this dream? That must be it, he gave me this ring and called me a hero and now I am dreaming I am a hero. Ha-ha wow simple really.”

“Perhaps she is telling the truth,” Tom ventured. “Maybe we use the Hero Forage not to make the hero’s from scratch but to dial and select the hero we want and then they are selected by the Forage from a world full of hero’s?”

“Hmmm,” Master Peckerwood stroked his long chin and squinted over at Madame Bandiecox who was nodding in and out of the conversation. “What do you think Bandiecox? You seem surprisingly well informed about the Hero’s Forage. I can start to see now why the council sent you along.”

Bandiecox snorted out of her half sleep and queried around her, “wha? Wha?”

“Oh no, my world isn’t full of heroes.” Elaina laughed and grabbed the jug of wine to fill her pewter ware tankard. “In fact, quiet the opposite. This dream world is MUCH nicer than my waking world. I mean everything is so fresh and bright and rich in color and there’s trees and well my world everything is dirty and filthy and it’s all concrete and steel and smelly and the corruption! Whew! Don’t get me started on the corruption. I mean the cops are as bad as the crooks and everything is just a few million rich people and their laws enslaving everyone. I mean, it’s bad. Really. There are no heroes. Not anymore. The governments killed them all. Long long ago. They just give out medals now to men who kill people for the governments benefit and call them heroes.”

“Well, that’s terrible.” Tom whined.

“Perhaps her world is so terrible so she is daily challenged and better prepared in it, to help us in ours?” Master Peckerwood eyed Madam Bandiecox who only shrugged in reply.

“What?! No, no, I didn’t do anything heroic there! I am sure that is why I am dreaming now about being a hero here where you open a book and you automatically can shoot a bow and everything is so beautiful and nice. This place is a dream as you call it and that place is a nightmare. I mean when I wake back up I will probably be in a cell about to be gang banged and then killed. Maybe that’s why this dream is lasting so long… I don’t want to wake up.”

The three short squat old people looked at one another in shock and astonishment. Madam Bandiecox finally spoke up, “tomorrow we will test the girl’s true mettle. There is a monster lair not half a day’s journey from this village. Over a small wooden bridge that the locals hand-crank the wooden planks to retract them to this side of the chasm to keep the monsters at bay. Just on the other side of that bridge is the ruins of a city. The name has been lost to time. The locals just call it ‘The Place of Death.’ You will cross that bridge and slay a monster or two and then we will see which of these worlds of yours are dream and nightmare.”

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Elaina stood at the lip of the plank bridge. Tom and Master Peckerwood were still sweating at the hand crank that was slowly extending the wooden planks across the deep treacherous chasm. Elaina had an arrow already nocked and was biting her lip and ignoring her dancing short skirt and the downy peach it was exposing down there. ‘Wow,’ she thought a little worried to herself. ‘I had guessed there would be some kind of monster bashing nonsense at the end of this dream, but hell, I mean I really thought when I went to sleep last night I would have woken up back in the real world or things would have changed radically. I mean, I actually get hungry and thirsty and tired and cold and I stubbed my toe climbing up this goat path of a ruined road to get here and it really hurt?! I mean I had to pee and poop this morning?! I can never remember needing to do that in a freaking dream before?! What if this is I don’t know somehow real? I mean my toe still smarts, what will it feel like if a monster bites off my arm?! Maybe I need to take charge of this dream and vamoose!’

The wooden slats finally clanked to a swinging stop and the men stood up sweating and worn out. “Heroine it is obviously to me that you do not believe this world you find yourself in is real. That you are just sleeping and dreaming as we all did last night. That you are going to wake-up soon back into your own world all safe and sound or unsafe and suffering as you tell it. But to us anyway, this is the real world. And we created or perhaps summoned you here to help us face and fight and hopefully destroy a great evil that is once again threatening our land. Not your usual evil want to rule the world wanabe’s but a true evil that exists only to destroy. It will lay waste to all this beauty and leave nothing but barren waste unless it is stopped.”

Elaina interrupted the old woman, “sounds like you have an infestation of corporate lawyers.”

“Hmmm, head over the bridge and slay a monster or two. The place is full of them. It will show you how real our world is, gain you a little much needed experience, earn you some bragging rights with the locals, which will come in handy when it comes time to settle our inn bill, and well, if you die, such is such. Any hero who can’t handle a few monsters would be more a hindrance than a help in the task ahead. Well, off with you now.”

“Alone?!” Elaina didn’t like that, but the woman just crossed her arms across her squat body and stared at her. Crossing the bridge seemed worse than facing monsters. It was a very long way down and the very narrow wooden bridge swung and swayed. She replaced her arrow and bow to her back, and clamped both hands firmly to the thick side ropes of the ‘V’ shaped bridge and ‘let the whole damn world see my golden snatch for all I care! I don’t want to fall!’

It took several minutes for her to cross to the other side even though it was journey of only a hundred feet. She felt a tremendous sense of relief as her shaking knees plopped down on firm stony ground again. The relief quickly faded away as she first heard and then saw the two men working the large wheeled hand-crank retracting the bridge’s wooden slats back across and thus cutting off her way back over the chasm.

“We three will return here tomorrow and if you are standing where you are now we will send the bridge back over to you. If not, well, such is such.” She held up her hand and in it was a strange blue stone. “In the center of the ruined city just over that hill behind you lies a temple set right in its center. You will find several of these blue carved stones on the surface of its inside walls. Bring one of these back as proof you were there and we will call it good. A lot easier than lugging a bunch of monster heads around. But without the monster heads the locals won’t pay a bounty and you won’t have any proof you slayed anything. Still bring heads and the stone or just the stone. The stone will be enough for me to think you worthy.”

“Take care,” Tom shouted and waved. Master Peckerwood waved as well and then all three of the short squat old figures moved up the rocky path and disappeared in the boulders of the cliffs far side.

“Well, this sucks,” Elaina sat down on one of the many white dusty rocks under the hot sun. “They did not even think to leave me any water or food. If this is their idea of planning an adventure then it is no wonder they need my help. Humph! Monster heads, yuck!”

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The ruins of the city were over the next ‘two’ hills not ‘one’ and the hills were more like desert canyons of white sandy rocky floor and dull red colored broken strata’s of sides. So it took her the better part of an hour to climb down them and up the other side of each one. She realized with hindsight that the canyons were a dried river bed and that she had cut across a long winding narrow bend in the dead river and that she could have simply followed the canyon floor in about the same time it took to climb in a straight line across it but that it would have been much easier to walk the floor and less exhausting and she wouldn’t be so thirsty as she was now. ‘How has it gone from rich woodland to an almost desert in just a short space,’ she wondered to herself? ‘I must be dreaming.’

But as she looked down from her perch up on the side of the shallow canyon she realized that by taking this direct route instead of following the winding floor she would not have the vantage point she now had to look down upon the edge of the ruins below her. In fact is she had followed the winding floor of the dead river bed it would have looped her around and set her smack at the far side of the stone ruins. With several places where the ruins themselves would have over hanged the lip of the bank and had the advantage over her approach, ‘if there are any monsters about they surely would have had an easy ambush of me had I stayed in that dead river bed.’ This thought gave her a smug twinge of courage for her being so smart and clever though it had been nothing but blind luck on her part.

The dead river bed was now at her back and the stone ruins lay slightly down a slope from her, but thought she watched intently as she rested she saw no sign of movement from the ruins. Elaina stood up from her uncomfortable seat upon the ‘ouchy’ white sandy rocks and eased her way down the rocky dusty incline to the edge of the ruins.

She didn’t know what she had been expecting but the ruins seemed well awfully ‘ruined’ to her way of thinking. They seem to consist of short squat single story buildings of a universally square shape made out of large white blocks of stone with simple open rectangular doorways and open square windows. They sat at in a line two or three deep running along the side of a very wide open paved street that was now mostly buried in small sand dunes and rocks. Only a few of the buildings still stood intact most were half collapsed and many were just piles of sand covered slabs of shattered stone and rock rubble.

The interior of each still standing building was inky black and rather than venture into them the heroine archer instead decided to climb up onto the roof of the nearest intact building. With such large unmortised blocks to use for hand and toe holds and only a short lip sticking out at the top of the flat roof, she found it not too difficult to climb the twelve foot tall building in a few grunting heaves and pulls.

Upon the flat white roof which seemed to have been made out of some kind of white tile she found her view point very little improved but her feeling of safety greatly increased. She moved cautiously from the back of the outer building to its front. Keeping crouched with arrow notched and staying near the edge of the roof incase the invisible wooden supports for the roof tile be rotted or desiccated to such an extent that they would suddenly collapse under her weight.

At the front of the building she saw the next row of evenly spaced small buildings and realized that the single room structures were mostly of a uniform design and were too well spaced to leap across from roof top to roof top especially considering how few were left standing. The wide plaza or road, of which the triple layer of identical stone buildings lay beside, ended abruptly at both ends; at one end it terminated at the edge of the sunken canyon dead river bed to her right. At the end it simply stopped at a steep sheer cliff that fell away for several hundred feet and no doubt was part of the narrow chasm which she had crossed earlier.

Elaina was puzzled. There did not seem to be any monsters or any temple. There was simply at her back a rocky slope leading back up the way she had come. With its winding doubling back sunken dead river bed and a short ways beyond that the chasm with the retracted wooden bridge that wouldn’t be available to cross until the three strange short people returned tomorrow morning. To her left the whole plain just gave way to a sheer cliff that widened out into a distant valley below. The valley below was lush and verdant and glistened with rivers and lakes. To her right the winding dead sunken river swooped in and cut off the wide road and its houses or buildings. In fact she couldn’t really understand what purpose the road served since all it did was dived the three layers of buildings from one side from the three layers of identical buildings on the other side. In front of her lay the wide paved road the next three layers of houses or buildings on its other side and a very large almost solid chunk of dark brown rock that rose up almost a hundred feet above the small plain and nearly cast the last row of houses in perpetual shadow.

Elaina’s legs were getting cramped from crouching and she decided to drop down from the squat building’s roof and move across the wide white paved boulevard and check out some of the still standing buildings on the other side. A fear of snakes, spiders, and anything creepy and crawly kept her from actually poking her head into any of the inky dark standing buildings but she guessed from what little she could see where a distorted rectangle of bright sun light fell through an open portal or chink in the wall that none of them contained anything more than rock, rubble, and sand. Monsters or no, it would seem the ruins had been stripped completely bare.

“Somehow I thought the ruins would have been more… mysterious, romantic, or at least not boring.” Elaina scowled at each identical hewed stone building or its collapsed breather. Not a one had the slightest decoration or carvings. It was as exciting as a parking garage.

It was then she saw the stone carved steps leading right up the heart of the back over hanging boulder that cut off the front side of the plain of houses. The ‘T’-shaped intersection of wide white paving that had branched off from right left boulevard had been nearly obliterated by several collapsing buildings and a large white sand dune, but once she saw the stair case its self the street leading to it could be roughly made out.

She walked back and forth along the singular mass of brown sandstone until she was certain this was the only stair case. She carefully ascended the stairs seemingly carved right into the heart of the enormous boulder and wished they had been as wide as the streets falling rapidly behind her, but they were scarcely wide enough to let four strong men walk abreast. At first the stairs were more like a tunnel that moved at an obstante stubborn stead ascending straight line angle but then they suddenly cut at a sharp right angle to the left and widened considerably. The angle remained the same and then they suddenly cut again at a right angle to right and widened out again. It was at this point that the, at the second turning that the roof of the stair case disappeared and was left open to the surface so sunlight angled in erasing away the darkness.

This last ascent of stairs, lead directly up into a center of a jumble of ruined buildings of all shapes and sizes and decorated styles. Elaina kept her head on a swivel as she anxiously looked around at the wondrous bizarre ruins that swarmed around her, “now this is a ruined city,” She said to herself and stopped herself from whistling as she realized this must be where all the monsters were lurking about that everyone was going on about.

The trip through the dark claustrophobic stair tunnel had shown Elaina two important things; that one she didn’t have to pee every time she was scared and that her supposed Elven Hunter Night Vision that was supposed to let her see in the dark didn’t work worth a shit. As far as the need to pee that might have simply been due to her increasingly dehydrated state; as far as the Night Vision, well she would have to talk to that short fat dumpy woman about that. She paused and wondered as she shifted her small feathered hat and scratched her head, ‘was everyone in her dream going to be so short and well ugly?’ Everyone she had seen in the village and in the inn they were staying in had seemed short fat dumpy and ass ugly. ‘I can’t understand it? This is such a strange dream. I usually dream about naked guys with huge dicks pounding my hole, or being stuck at the office getting yelled at and piles of work that just never ends. It’s like I am stuck in someone else’s dream. Some nerds little pervert sword and sorcery shit.’ Elaina sighed and then looked down at her rapidly flipping skirt hem and her strobe like flashing sex and giggled, “Well if I am in some pervs dream he must be creaming his star wars level ten padawan Jedi P.J.’s about now.”

The ruins all around her were richly decorated in carved stone reliefs with many statues and gargoyles and green vines and leafy small shrubs and trees. “Green?! That means water!” Sure enough just slightly to the left of the stair well she had just clambered out of was what HAD to be the temple. It was the largest/tallest building and it seemed be composed out of mostly steps and columns. Down the center of all four sides of the building’s staircases ran a loudly splashing channel of clearing flowing water. These four channels of water in turn left steps and fell into canals that ran along the rest of the buildings in a slow steady stream. Behind the temple was another great mass of boulders and it was from one of these the water rushed out as a waterfall that landed directly through the open roof of the temple and then down its four side stair cases to run through the rest of the upper city.

“Those bastards, they re-routed the water fall so it was captured here for their rich elite to drink and left what must have been their workers or slaves down below with nothing but a dead river bed… must have been Republicans.” Elaina moved cautiously towards the large temple with its cool lush splashing waterfalls and no doubt the blue stone she would need to keep the fat short bitch off her back, on tip-toeing but rapid feet. She had not realized just how thirsty she was until she had seen, heard, and yes smelled all that fresh cascading water!

The stone square cut canals water looked a bit sluggish and were chocked with water lilies and pads and sweet smelling large blooming flowers. She moved past them preferring the fresher looking rapidly moving water shooting down the shallow channel of the temple steps. Nervous habit, instinct, a collection of the senses beyond the edge of conscious sensory awareness, or just a single girl use to walking home late at night through the greed gutted ruins of the once great now fallen Empire of the United States of America, whatever the reason or cause Elaina suddenly turned and looked over her shoulder as she continued moving quickly toward the temple,  back across the paved stones she had traversed, over the right angle square cut channels of over grown cannels, past the rail-less sunken pit of stairs carved into the heart of the great sandstone boulder, to the low multi-column single floor dark vine tangled long rectangular buildings, where two and then three black shapes quickly emerged. A fourth black shape was already rushing past the open pit of the stairwell.

If they had been men, street thugs or cops, she would have screamed and raced as fast as she could in the opposite direction. If they had been men, wealthy getting out of their armored limos or priests getting out of their armored limos, she would have rapidly continued on her way making sure that her way was as far away from them as possible. If they had been men, derelicts or strangers, she would have slowed her pace and warily readied her weapon. If they had been a pack of street curs, famished and wild, she would have moved quickly onto something high and readied her weapon. If they had been a pack of wild panthers, or lions, or bears, or any other kind of readily recognizable dangerous beasts she would have ran for the nearest high ground and prepared herself for battle. But it was none of those things.

It was something she could not recognize. It was large like a small car, shoulder height, it moved on all fours with a rapid looping gait, like a horse or mastiff, it had its long tongue lolling out of its open mouth, it had a wide squat head, it had long limbs that ended in something that was half paw half hand, it had several small white round eyes each with a tiny black dot of a pupil in each, it was entirely black except for its red, red mouth, its front body was very muscular but it had very weak narrow hips, so that as it lopped along it ran at an odd tilt, it looked like something between a bear and an ape, with a lions shaggy mane on its long powerful neck, it was so odd that Elaina actually took her eyes off of it as she ran to look forward and adjust her path to make sure she did not stumble as she continued to move rapidly on her tip-toing feet.

When she confusedly looked back over her shoulder a second latter her face frowned in puzzlement the front creature had broken off its lopping stride for a full blown sprint and its smiling dopey tongue lolling grin had been replaced with a flat faced impossibly wide mouth full of huge white fangs!

Elaina’s eyes went wide as did her mouth and she screamed and began to sprint as fast as she could. The creature was only a few yards behind her and obviously much, much faster than she was! Her mad pell-mell frantic rush sent her splashing crashing into the shallow cut channel of water fall set in the middle of the temple steps, her initial destination. She now madly splashed through the raging torrent. The channel had looked shallow but in fact it was thigh deep and its powerful icy cold pull down the steep sides of the pyramid like temple steps were too much for her thigh high boot heels. She almost instantly spun in place and fell, tumbling helplessly down the steep side of the channel the cold water shoving-carrying her along.

The front steps of the temple waterfall channel emptied or ran directly into a wide rectangular pool and this in turn began a right angle channel that meandered back and forth throughout the upper city. Elaina had made her way to the left side steps of the temple for no other reason than these had been closer to the stair well she had just risen from. The open court yard to her right let her easily see how the water came down from the front steps and how it entered the rectangular pool and then passed on into the right angled this way and that plant clogged channel. She had naturally assumed the side steps on the left would mirror this and that the waterfall channel she perceived here would like the front channel and as she could also distantly perceived the right angle switchbacks of the over grown far right channel where she deduced another stair case and waterfall existed that must surely mirror the front as well, that the left channel would follow a similar structured course. However it did not.

Instead of empting into a single square sided channel of about six feet in width and perhaps an equal six feet in depth (it was impossible for her to guess the depth of these channels even though she had to skirt two of them in their odd right angle jutting’s as they were so chocked with overgrow vegetation) the left staircase water fall fell into an almost immediate cross roads split. One channel lead immediately to her left and was no doubt the channel she had to make her way around twice in its meanderings to reach the temple from the stairwell. The second lead to the right and as the actual water in each channel was a good foot or two below the stone lip of the channel and green water plants soared several feet above the lip of the channel all she could make of it when she came up cartwheeling and sputtering was that it lead off in a straight line for a few yards before being obscured from her sight. The last direction the cross roads of water lay directly ahead and here is where she headed as first and foremost it was the direction she was pointing when she regained her feet and as it lead directly to a bridge.

In four water logged lunges she was under the stone bridge which pressing her head up against its underside left just her nose and eyes above the water. She turned here to look back at the cascading waterfall to see the black skinned creature fighting madly to keep from sliding down the water fall and succeeding at the last second to pull its self out of the channel just before it would have plunged down into the channel just few feet away from her. “More cat than dog. They seem to hate the water?” She noted as she now could hear the clicking of claws of the other animals above her as they paced back and forth on the stone bridge above her head.

She could also hear their snuffling of their wide faced short snouted almost bowl shaped creatures faces no doubt pressed against the stone flagging of the bridge as well as the padding of their clawed hands and feet.  Sooner or later hunger or curiosity would send one of them over the side of the flat simple bridge and into the water where her bow would be useless against them. Elaina turned herself around carefully to see where the water channel led after passing under the broad bridge. She was surprised to see that in just a short span of a body length the water channel cluttered as it was with slime and water plants passed directly into a the low mouth of a stone arch. This stone arch existed because the water channel passed under a large building.

She could not understand why a channel of water would have been carved under a building or a building built over the top of a channel of water but considering the smell of the water the channels were likely more sewage ditches than drinking aqueducts in their day! She eyed the shadowy black arch. It was only a little higher at its peak then the bridge span that she had her head pressed up against. The water way was clogged with aquatic plants; even now she was struggling to untangle the steams from around her legs, arms, and body. Sheer momentum of her fall had propelled her through the channel’s short distance from the waterfall to the bridge. Momentum and fear, the fear was still there but would it be enough to wade to that archway through the tangle of water weeds before one of those ‘things’ leapt upon her? “If I cannot go fast enough to reach the archway then maybe I should try to go slower?”

Elaina rose up slowly from within the shadow of the rim of the archway and spit out the hallow reed stem she had used to breathe through during her slow inching underwater journey from the underside of the bridge. She looked back at the creatures on the stone bridge. The black shapes continued to move about agitated along the edges of the bridge with their flat bull faces pressed down. Up close their skin looked scaled and in truth there was a lot of serpentine movement to their pacing. She turned away from the bridge before one of them could see her and moved further back in the icy cold water. A few feet back a set of vertical bars blocked any further progress but these were widely set apart. And with much squeezing of her breasts and the aid of the slimy nature of pulped plants tangled around her she managed to squeeze past the bars and through the last of the archway into what proved an actual room. There were many high slits in the stone walls of the room through which slats of light rayed through illuminating dimly the interior.

The water channel cut through the center of the room turning at a sharp right angle upon reaching the middle of the floor where it then proceeded out of sight being cut off from any further view by a large stone stair case that ran along the wall to her left. Elaina saw no movement or creatures in the room and thankfully hauled herself with some difficulty out of the foul smelling waterway. She moved away from the play clogged slimy trench and began yanking stems from around her limbs and body as well as nettles from her hair. When most of the water weeds were removed she held up her ring and dismissed her archer suit. One thing she had already learned from her short practice in the back storage court yard of the inn was that if her hat blew away instead of chasing after it she could simply dismiss her outfit and when she resumed it the hat would be back on her head. Sort of like her magic arrows that re-appeared in her quiver after she shot them. It worked with tears and stains as well. No matter how badly damaged or soiled one of her uniform/costumes became all she had to do was dismiss it or summon another to replace it and when she summoned it back it would brand new and fully intact.

Elaina decided to summon her knight’s outfit as a sword and shield would be nice and even Fanboyz Fan-Tits-See armor was better than walking around naked. With her new outfit in place and sword in hand and shield up she began to explore her new environment in earnest. The stone room was square in overall shape and roughly forty feet in size. There were two flat simple stone slab bridges that crossed the water channel as it cut through the room. Both set at equal distance from the point where it turned at a right angle to her left and disappeared behind the open stone steps on her left. There were stone columns evenly placed about the room to hold the high flat ceiling which appeared to be stone as well. In fact the only metal she could remember seeing so far in the ruins were the bars in the water way she had just squeezed through and they had appeared to be a much corroded bronze.

Instead of walking to where the stair case ended and peering around it, the naturally cautious girl decided to take the ‘high ground’ and mounted the stairs and slowly climbed them. The stair case which ran along the stone wall on her left were open with any kind of railing on the right side and she slowly walked up them with shield raised and sword at the ready. A stance very useful but exhausting on the arms and back after a few minutes and when combined with a crouched thigh tense readiness was even more so. The stair case ended along with the extension of the wall about halfway into the room where it turned abruptly and now proceeded along with the wall to the left showing that the first appearance of the room being a square was inaccurate and in fact the room was more of an ‘L-shape’ the shorter side being the one she had entered from. So that now she was at the sharp angular left turning of the stair case which ran along the left side long hallway wall. Here the stair case formed a mezzanine or parapet running evenly about fifteen feet off the floor below to the end of the room where it turned into to stairs again going up into inky darkness. To her right the floor of the hallway/room continued much the same as it had in its shorter boxy limb. The water channel cut down the center of the floor with evenly spaced stone pillars holding up the high ceiling. The far wall held one open portal at the floor level buy no staircase or any other aspect worth noting. There was an open portal door half way down the stone rail-less balcony she found herself upon between her and the far continuation of the stair case. The room ended in a large wall where both channel and passage continued through an arched open portal.

“So there are four ways out of this room.” Elaina mused as she peered about her in the dim light. “There is a doorway down below on the chambers main floor that leads off to the right. There is an arched passageway that continues on straight ahead with the channel going with it. There is a stone staircase straight ahead at the end of this raised walkway. And lastly there is an open portal opening embedded along the raised walkway about halfway between me and the far ascending stairs. Hmm, I would think it best to take the stairs up and get to some high ground and hopefully find a way out of this building that would give me a good observation point of the rest of the city. I have no need to explore any of these buildings except the temple.”

Elaina crouched further behind her shield and walked steadily until she was almost upon the open door at which point she slowed her booted tread and crept as quietly as possible up to its edge. She paused and then darted a look around the corner of the open doorway. The portal opened upon a dark short passageway. It was covered in green lichen upon the walls and floor and it opened into a dark squat box of a room. Or at least that was all she could make out from her vantage point of peeking around a corner. She pulled back and looked straight ahead to the dark staircase that vanished upward into the wall at the end of the chamber. ‘One dose not leave a castle in one’s rear.’ She thought to herself. ‘That must be part of the instant book bit from the knight’s training.’ As it did not make the least amount of sense to her, except that it might not be a good idea to leave unexplored areas in one’s immediate wake that might be full of nasty surprises that could creep up on you or you may stumble over if you suddenly have to make a hasty retreat.

“Maybe some more light? Let’s try that night vision shit again and see if I can make it work this time,” Elaina gave her ring a few twists and she was back again in her Elf archer costume. She looked around. “Ugh, it’s no good I just don’t know how to activate this ability.” She twisted the ring again and she was in her witches outfit. She instantly felt horny. “Wow, I always feel so naughty when I wear this one.” The witches outfit was just too revealing for her to wear back at the inn’s courtyard so she had very little practice with any of its power set. And while it might not be a good idea to test out a something unknown and new in a situation already rift with unknown and new that had teeth and claws this was a dream after all and she did like how incredibly horny and sexy the outfit made her feel. In fact she was embarrassed at how much she enjoyed the perverted thrill of the outfit. “If I had the warrior monk’s variation on the knight I could cast ‘cleanse’ and get all this yucky stuff out of my hair and give my body a good wash, but the witch has, ‘cauldron’ if I can just find a safe place to cast it.” The ledge she was on was about six feet wide and of solid large blocks of stone but so many unexplored passages in a city ruin of monsters made it a risky gambit to cast the spell here.

Her witches powers came with 12 spells, they would increase in power as she continued casting them and would over time open up with new additional options. If she had just chosen the witch instead of all she would have had fifteen spells and most of her spells would have been combative or defensive in nature. But as it was she had several unique sort of housekeeping spells that let her advance them into whole new branches of additional powers that otherwise would never have been available to her. One such spell was, ‘cauldron.’

“I will just have to explore this side room here and see if it is safe enough to cast the spell.” Elaina Grasped her staff firmly and straddled it between her legs and breasts and ground her pussy up and down the shaft until she was good and aroused and then held out her left hand with fingers splayed and cast, ‘tiny familiar.’ There was a crackle of purple light and a foot long black centipede fell to the floor. She held her curled top of her staff to her forehead and concentrated. The centipede raced off down the bisecting hallway and into the little dark room. As she concentrated she could see a small area around the creature as it scurried along. This left her blind to her own surroundings but the spell only lasted a minute or two. The insect crawled about rapidly all around the room before suddenly curling up and dissolving to black ash.

Elaina pulled her forehead away from the curled wooden staff head and her own eyesight slowly y returned to her. “The room seems empty. Still best to be safe,” Elaina slowly moved around the corner of the portal and crept down the short stone hallway until she was in the small room. Again silts in the stone high above let in rays of light to dimly illuminate the square room. It was roughly fifteen feet in size with a high ceiling and upon the left side wall slits had been carved into the stone work to act as handholds for climbing up to a second story loft.

Elaina decided it best to investigate this loft before declaring the room safe. It was an awkward climb as you could not ‘grab’ a hand hold as one could with a ladder rung but had to pull one’s self up using the niches as if climbing a rock face, but she managed it and soon found herself in the loft. The ceiling was low here and she had to stoop but there was nothing here of any note. A few shards of pottery but nothing else of containers or threat, however, the far wall of the loft contained a niche and here was set a simple wooden door. The door was so desiccated that it virtually blended in with the rough stone and was so far gone with age and weathering that it fell to pieces with a few jabs of her staff.

The small door opened out into broad daylight! She would have to get down on her hands and knees and crawl but here was an access point to the roof of the building! She was very pleased with herself but first thing first, a bath! Elaina scuttled crab-walking rapidly under the low angled ceiling of the loft and climbed back down the stone gouge hand holds, the beginning descent of this being somewhat scary as she turned this way and that until she just lowered herself on her belly down until she was hanging by her fingertips on the edge of the loft floor and found a foot hold with tentative toes and then climbed down still a little frightened until she was halfway down and no longer in fear of serious injury should she now slip and fall. “Going up is much easier,” she noted as she turned away from the wall and moved out to the center of the small room to cast her spell. “If nothing else I need the practice.”

She again straddled her staff and really feeling the arousal ground her hips as her wet dripping pussy lips and swollen clit slurped up and down the shaft of her staff. She threw out her left hand with fingers splayed and cast, “cauldron.’ Instantly there was a large black cast iron cauldron sitting in the center of the room upon a pile of wood. It was already full of clean clear water and she drank from it with much relief. Then she smacked the wood with her staff and the wood burst into flames. Next she held her staff in front of her and let go and it stood perfectly upright as she removed all her clothes and large oversized hat and shoes and stockings and gave them to her staff which sprouted wooden hands to hold them. Then with many ohhs and ahhs she climbed into the large iron spherical container which was already beginning to warm up and soaked.

It was a good bath and very refreshing and much needed for her hair’s sake, but without any kind of soap it had its limits but still at least she felt very refreshed. She stepped out of the makeshift bath and twisted her ring so that everything disappeared. She would remain naked for a little while until her skin dried a bit and the best place to do that would be outside on the roof! The climb up was complicated by her wanting to not touch anything dirty having just bathed but she made it up and then though the aperture of the low doorway and soon she was standing on the roof of the building.

The roof was mostly flat but it was composed of a sort of step pyramid design seemingly for no other purpose than to give raised areas for carved reliefs of decoration. The wooden door way had opened out behind one of these elaborate carved stone images and she was thus partially hidden from the expanse below her. It took her only a moment to realize she was looking out over to the temple and thus the open area down below where she spotted the canal and bridge she had taken refuge under from the black skinned creatures. One of them still snuffed along the bridge and one other was doing its odd slow snake like spine slink undulating lopping motion across the front of the temple. None of the other beasts could be seen.

Elaina quickly looked around her to see if there was any direct way up to her spy nest from the ground. She couldn’t see one immediately around her but she realized the steps leading up she had seen from the raised walkway back inside the building must lead up to the roof as well. As she squatted behind the raised carved stone work she had one of the raised steps of the pyramid roof at her back. This raised stone blocked off any view she had of the rest of the roof around her but if she explored any further the creature down below might see her or it might wander off and she had decided to try her hand at some monster slaying!

Elaina turned the outer circle of metal on her ring and the white opal turned green. She was back in her Elf Archer costume. She thought of summoning her witch costume which had a nice little alchemy set where she could make poisons but as soon as she summoned a new costume any items she had created in another costume would vanish. ‘The sets just don’t mix and match unless they are of the same class.’ So she notched arrow and pulled it back until the fletching was brushing her ear and the deadly point was centered on a point just behind the creature’s forelimb arm so it was centered on the side of its elongated barrow chest. She breathed and let the arrow fly. It hit its mark and the creature leaped up hissing and then began to bite and claw at the arrow embedded in its side. Elaina quickly nocked and let fly another arrow and then another and then another and then another. Until finally the beast fell still.

She was breathing heavily and rapidly that had been rather intense and frightening as the monster had not fallen with anything of the ease she had expected. She counted the arrows in her quiver… nine. She had missed once. ‘Bummer.’ There was movement down below out of the corner of her eye and she turned to see another of the creatures come scurrying up to the fallen one and start sniffing at it and then around its corpse. She notched another arrow and let it fly. The arrow sunk deep into the creatures head. Right into one of its many small round white eyes. The beast recoiled back and threw open its impossibly wide mouth, more a tunnel with concentric circular rows of teeth than a mouth and it stared right at her hissing in pain and fury?!

Elaina quickly put another arrow into the mouth but it tore through the side and shattered upon the pavement. The creature flashed away to the right out of sight. In the far distance she could see the beast that had been lopping along the front of the temple stop and turn its long powerful neck to look back over its narrow shoulders to where the dead creature lay. She knew from the angle it was at that it could not see the creature but she knew it had heard the commotion of the wounding of the last monster that had raced off.

Elaina now was starting to get a bit anxious. She was certain the creature she had just wounded was now on its way up to her location on the roof. If she remained where she was it would sooner or later be upon her. She would have to move and move quickly; however, any movement might catch the attention of the creature in front of the temple which was now slowly serpentine slinking back in her direction. “If I screw this up I could have two monsters on this roof with me.” She briefly pondered waiting a few more seconds and getting off a shot at the slowly approaching beast, “better to be facing two wounded monsters than one wounded and one fully healthy. Besides maybe I can kill it?” But fear of the wounded creature leaping at her in a blur and her caught in her tight cramped quarters sent her moving.

She did not know how many access points there was to the roof of this large rectangular building but she knew there was one at her back that lead back onto the loft and its small room. And she guessed that the stairs leading up had to come out upon the roof somewhere nearby. She moved away from the broken rubble of the door leading back into the loft and keeping an eye on the approaching creature down below weaved her way along the raised images and cut stone for as far as she could before it dead ended in a few yards and she was forced to climb up onto the raised wall behind her. As soon as she began her climb the creature down below saw her and flashed in the same direction the wounded creature had blurred off to. “Great, now I have two monsters chasing after me.”

She pulled herself up onto the next ledge of the roof and began to run as fast as she could, all thoughts of stealth abandoned. She ran away from the loft opening and away from where she believed the stairs must come out on to the roof. She ran until the ledge was obstructed by carvings and she climbed up to the next step level of the roof. This turned out to be the actual roof top and she quickly surveyed it. Behind her from the direction she had been running from she could make out a second attached building set upon the roof of the building she was on and realized the steps she had seen from the parapet must have lead up into that second story. She spun around to look at the temple she was too high up to jump down to the pavement and race in its direction.

In the opposite direction of the temple the flat roof only showed its eventual edge and a number of lower roofed buildings beyond. She turned away from these directions back toward the direction she had been fleeing. Here she saw that there was another smaller building roof just beyond the edge of this one and beyond that a decorated square tower and the mass of cliffs butting up next to that. It was from this great wall of cliffs that to her right the waterfall fell into the center of the roofless temple. She ran to the edge of the roof and then gauged the distance to the next building. She decided she could just make it and retracing her steps turned again and sprinted and leaped. She landed on the lower roof and paused for a moment from the shock of the impact.

Standing up she saw the square tower was not attached to the small richly decorated building but several vines hung down from it that covered the cliff side it stood next to. She made her way to the vines and began to climb them up to the open window of the tower. By the time she accomplished this feat and was breathlessly now through the window of the tower she looked back and saw the far roof she had just leapt and vacated swarming with a dozen of the black skinned ape/lion/snake/wolf creatures. They were sniffing around the roof and had apparently not found her scent trail yet. She turned away ignoring them and surveyed any immediate dangers in the room she found herself in; it was a room. A small square room in keeping with the towers rough outer dimensions. There was a bronze bar door that sat at the top of a staircase leading down. She ran over to it and shoved home the large bronze bolt that could only be reached from this side and thus would now make it impossible for anyone or monster to make their way past without considerable effort. A second staircase lead up to the next level of the tower and a quick look showed this square room to be as empty and bare as the one below with the same identical single open window and another bronze bar door. The door was unbolted and she returned back to the floor below.

Elaina transformed back into her knight costume and drawing her sword began to hack at the vines she had climbed up until all the window area was clear of them. This made any attempt to reach the upper window above her likewise impossible. Then she transformed back into her Elf Archer costume and un-shouldered her bow and notched an arrow. She concentrated and let fly. The arrow struck its   mark and a creature spun in place hissing its rage and pain. For the next several minutes she let her arrows fly into the confused furious horde of beasts. During the extended flurry she missed twice, “down to seven arrows.”

Eventually the monsters figured out where she was and they quickly swarmed onto the roof next to the tower. This quickly became a killing pit as they had no way up to the tower with the vines all hacked away. She fired arrow after arrow until her fingers went numb and her arms and chest and back ached and she was forced to stop less she start losing any more arrows. She sat there upon the stone sill of the window and breathed heavy as she counted the dead. Ten of the beasts had been slain plus the one on the bridge. Still more had shown up and now most of these had disappeared no doubt looking for a way into the tower at its base. Four still hissed at her from the small building’s roof and paced back and forth glaring up at her and leaping now and then with surprising power and agility. She went ahead and killed off these four as well, like fish in a barrel. But she missed once more against the lighting fast creatures and was now down to six arrows in her quiver.

Still her skill level as the Elf archer had improved immensely and when she looked around her she could see rather well in the growing dark of the late afternoon sun’s shadows. “Looks like my night vision is starting to work!” She was tired and hungry and she kept eyeing the bronze barred door expecting any second that the beasts would be there spitting and hissing but there was neither sign nor sound of them. She began to wonder if their skinny bodies might just slip between those thick bars and that sent a chill through up her spine. She decided to move up stairs and put another locked door between her and them.

This next room was identical to the one below it and she shut the large heavy bolt on the barred door and looked around the room. The only way down was to unlock the doors and proceed through the rest of the floors of the tower to its base or to a lower window though she had not seen any lower windows when she had climbed up the vines. She could guess from what she had seen of the square tower from her outer ascent that she was on the last floor before its exposed top. The top had been open on the sides but roofed so she guessed there must be away from this floor up to that one.

It turned out that instead of a stair case or ladder there was simply a wooden trap door set in the out of reach ceiling. She turned into her witch costume and after a considerable amount of rubbing she managed to grow her staff up through the trap door bursting it into slivers in the process. Then it was a shimmy and climb and she was up on the towers outer top. By now night had descended and she was very tired and hungry. She summoned, ‘cauldron’ so she would have some fresh clean water to drink and striking the fire under it gave her a campfire to lie down upon the stone flagging of the roofed tower top and catch a few hours of much needed sleep.

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“I told you we should have gone with her,” Tom moaned with his head in his hands as he sat upon the jumble of rocks next to the withdrawn wooden bridge crank.

“You and your stupid notions!” Master Peckerwood snarled at Madam Bandiecox. “Wait until your precious council hears you sent our only hero into a monster filled ruin just because you wanted to ‘test her’! I can imagine what tests they will have in store for you when we get back!”

Madam Bandiecox pulled at her collar and swallowed hard. It was late afternoon and there was no sign of the heroine.

“Hello there! Sorry I am late! Had a bit of trouble getting the bounty back. Had to use my knight costume and had to keep casting, ‘steed’ to give me the endurance and strength but my knight skills are still a bit low so it was kind of slow going but thanks for waiting. Say could you get that bridge across to me? You didn’t leave me any water or food so I am famished!” It was Elaina and she was waving at them from the other side of the chasm in her knight costume.

Tom and Master Peckerwood began to work furiously at the wheel as the wooden bridge slowly clattered across the narrow gorge.

Madame Bandiecox breathed a deep sigh of relief and cleared her throat as she reached for her pipe, “have any troubles?”

“Nah,” Elaina shook her head as she waited for the bridge to reach her side of the chasm.

“And did you find my blue stone to prove you made it to the temple in the center of the ruins?” the old crone squinted over at the girl as she packed her pipe.

“Yep,” Elaina reached into her knight’s belt pouch and held up the blue stone. “But your directions were all wrong. The temple is not in the center of the town it is up on the rock facing directly behind it. luckily I was in this tower and I could see the temple carved there and a series of ledges I could jump to and reach it without having to go down through the lower section which would have been a pain. Oh and the place was guarded by this really fierce monster. I had to use all my costumes to defeat it and I am afraid I am down to just four arrows now in my quiver. So that kind of sucks.” Elaina held up the arrow bristled and witch fire charred and sword cleaved severed head of the temple monster which was almost twice her size and all three gasped at it.

“Well, that is alright lass. There is an El-Azore twenty-five quiver of arrows in the museum of Makesh that I am sure the council can persuade them to part with. You have done well hero.” Madam Bandiecox smiled. “Now do you need a hand with your bounty trophy there?”

“Ah, thanks. I don’t think I could have lugged ‘em all the way back on my own.” Elaina smiled as the wooden bridge finally clanked to her side of the chasm. “I had to come back through the dead river bed on the way back so that took a while. Oh, my stomach won’t stop growling I hope we can hurry back to the inn.”

“That’s alright we didn’t mind waiting we knew you would get back as soon as possible. Now you two men get over there and give the girl a hand with that bounty head it looks heavy.” Madam Bandiecox was already losing her own head behind a growing cloud of blue pipe smoke.

“Right you are. Come on Tom it looks a bit awkward but I think we can help the girl carry one monster head back to the inn and cash it in for its bounty credits.” Master Peckerwood sauntered across the swaying bridge with Tom in egger chase.

“Ah, er, one?!” Elaina looked nervously behind her where a stringer of rope led to dozens of severed bloody monster heads of all shapes and sizes until they trailed off out of sight around the corner of the rocky bend.

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